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So after fretting over the ongoing dilution of Apple’s market cap, a new spate of positive comments sent the stock price soaring all over again on Wednesday. This roller coaster effect will likely continue until next week, when Apple spills the beans on the last quarter’s earnings picture.

In the meantime, though, it’s probably far more reasonable to speculate on what sort of product mix you should expect from Apple this year. Predicting the highs and lows of the stock price is best left to people who earn the big bucks by providing that information. Or maybe they should all be ignored because of the contradictions and the really amateurish reporting you see in the financial world these days.

Now when you want to speculate on Apple’s future product plans, things can go from logical to wacky real quickly. So, based on the way Apple has handled previous iPhone upgrades, and allowing for the factor of unpredictability, it’s fair to suggest the next revision will be an iPhone 5s. It will have essentially the same form factor as the iPhone 5, and may seem indistinguishable even up close. The media skeptics will rant how Apple is not creative anymore. But when you look inside, this iPhone 5s will sport faster parts, and maybe some extra features, such as fingerprint recognition and NFC.

NFC, or Near Field Communication, is one of those features that is already present on other smartphones. Samsung uses that as an advantage, showing you in some of TV ads how you can easily share your stuff by merely tapping another Samsung smartphone, and isn’t it interesting that you can’t do that on an iPhone? Well, once Apple is satisfied that the standard can be reliably implemented, which isn’t a given these days, you may see it turn up. The iPhone wasn’t the first to offer 3G and LTE either. For Apple, it’s never about adding new features, but adding features that make sense and usually work reliably. I say usually, since Maps for iOS 6 was obviously other than reliable.

So far, there’s nothing here that should strike anyone as stretching logic. It’s a natural evolution of the iPhone. But one analyst is taking about a different sort of iPhone 5, with a plastic back. I suppose that’s to make it cheaper, and somehow in keeping with speculation about a low-cost iPhone. But it hardly makes sense since, with the same components, the cost savings would be slight. What will probably happen is that the iPhone 5, in 8GB form, will be sold for less, probably $100 with a two-year contract. The iPhone 4s will take the low-end of the lineup, and the iPhone 4 will be history. But since even a free iPhone will cost roughly $400 without a carrier subsidy, some suggest Apple must make one cheaper yet, say in the $199 range. Think about hundreds of millions of potential customers in the third world, or in any situation where a subsidized wireless plan isn’t an option?

How to make a cheaper iPhone? Well, if Apple plans to sell hundreds of millions of copies, they might not have to sacrifice very much to bring the bill of particulars down. Or maybe they will use cheaper versions of some components, and consider ditching other features, but the latter doesn’t make a whole lot of sense; well partly. Without a Retina display, and with a cheaper, but no less elegant case, maybe Apple could sell one for $299.

Remember the analysts, so-called, suggested the iPad mini would be sold for $249 or $299, and you all know how that turned out. So I wouldn’t dispute the prospects of lower cost iPhone, but it won’t be nearly as inexpensive as the analysts suggest. That’s just not Apple’s way.

Regardless, it has been suggested the next iPhone will come by summer, along with, perhaps, iOS 7. Nothing to dispute there. I think Apple does want to speed up the product refresh cycle.

For the iPad, come March or April, the mini gets a Retina display. And the fifth generation full-sized iPad will be thinner and lighter. Again no stretch.

The same can be said about the long-awaited Mac Pro refresh, since Tim Cook promises a respectable revision to Apple’s professional Mac. It may even come with a new form factor, and thinner and lighter makes sense. But if it loses the optical drive, you are going to hear loads of complaints from content creators who will object to being forced to buy one as an option on a workstation, even if it’s only $79. This one you can expect by WWDC time, along with, perhaps, news about OS 10.9.

MacBooks will get expected product refreshes, and some suggest the Retina display will be available for less money and ultimately appear on the entire lineup. But wouldn’t it be nice if Apple relented about those impossible RAM upgrade prospects? The iMac, having arrived so late in 2012, probably won’t get a refresh till fall, and it’ll just be faster parts.

Aside from some iPod updates, what’s left? Oh yes, a certain TV initiative. But I still think it’ll be less about an Apple branded TV set and more about a souped up Apple TV box.

All so predictable. But what about the Apple gadget that you never thought you’d need, but, once you use it, you can’t live without it? Can Apple still deliver such a thing? And what would Apple gadget that you didn’t expect? What indeed!

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3 Responses to “More Confused Apple Product Speculation”

I’m surprised no one has mentioned that the ‘cheap iPhone’ could be a iPod Nano with a phone added. You’d be able to buy songs or rent movies, but not add apps. Make it pre-paid and that’s that. The manufacturing process is already there, just squeeze in a phone.

It may even come with a new form factor, and thinner and lighter makes sense.

My hope is for something that can be reasonably rack-mounted. I know of some Apple customers who are dropping Macs in the datacenter for just that reason.

But if it loses the optical drive, you are going to hear loads of complaints from content creators who will object to being forced to buy one as an option on a workstation, even if it’s only $79.

I’d be one of those–mostly because of price.

My complaint, as I’ve expressed before, is that Apple has become anorexic–willing to sacrifice everything in order to be as thin as possible. Which is fine, but I’m essentially paying more for the same capabilities that I used to have.

My old PowerMac G5 was a $3000 workhorse that did anything I wanted to do. So I get a bit annoyed when I spend $3000 and then have to spend $79 for a USB 3 DVD burner, $49 for a cable to convert Thunderbolt to DVI, 2x as much for an extra Thunderbolt hard drive, hubs, etc.

Again, Apple needs to remember there’s a difference between the “Consumer” and the “Pro” market in regards to what they expect from a machine.

I think Apple wants to stop selling the iPhone 4 and 4S as soon as possible. Not only do they still use the old 30-pin connector their all-glass design is relatively expensive to make.

So I think it’s reasonable to guess that the new “inexpensive” iPhone is actually just the guts of the 4S stuffed into a less expensive case with the new 8-pin connector. The iPad mini is essentially an iPad 2 in a different case so they’ve done it before and managed to cut the price at the same time. I would expect a few compromises like replacing the 8MP camera in the 4S with the 5MP one from the iPod touch.

So I think that solves the mystery of the iPhone mini rumours, but what of all the people who think Apple needs a larger model iPhone to take on Android?

Samsung is the only other handset maker turning a significant profit and I believe most of that profit comes from the Galaxy SIII. HTC makes a very similar phone, the One X, but they’re barely above break even because even a premium priced phone needs to sell enough volume to recoup its design and development costs.

Apple could probably make it work and turn a profit on a new form factor, but before even thinking about designing a larger iPhone they need to figure out why the Galaxy SIII is selling so well. Is it:
1. Samsung’s massive advertising budget?
2. The large display size on the SIII?
3. Features in Android that iOS is missing?
4. People actively avoiding Apple products? (for whatever emotion based reasons they have)
5. Price?

From an end user standpoint I would definitely like a larger iPhone. If I wasn’t concerned about Google tracking everything I do and everywhere I go I would already have a big Android phone.

From a mobile app development standpoint, however, I’m not so sure. The iPhone 5 introduced a new screen resolution and a new larger iPhone would introduce another. It would be additional effort to make the UI look good on 640×960, 640×1136 and whatever new resolution is chosen. Android apps can be written with a different UI for each screen category, but in practice few make the effort so Android has a lot of stretched apps that show no more information on a 5.5″ display than they do on a 3.7″ one. iOS apps are expected to have pixel perfect layouts for each screen size.

I would also like a little more flexibility to personalize my phone, an area that both Android and Windows are way ahead of Apple on. iOS 7 could introduce UI changes to let people make more changes to their iPhones and give developers a bit more freedom to innovate, but I’m not holding my breath.